COLUMN: Entertainment’s Impact on Mass Shootings

This past Valentine’s Day, an awful shooting occurred at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The incident is now one of the worst mass shootings in history, akin to that of Columbine in 1999. The teen responsible for this senseless murder, 19 year old Nikolas Jacob Cruz, is mentally unstable. Western civilization always had people like that and always will.

And as usual, the far-left in the media and entertainment industries, and has shamelessly exploited this senseless act of evil to advocate for more gun control.

ABC by far is the worst of the bunch, using their airwaves – whether it be late night, morning or evening newscasts, or whatever it may be – to do nothing but praise those protesting far-left causes as well as trash the president, the governor of Florida (in this case), and conservatives or Second Amendment advocates.

Martha Raddatz is a big problem here. This past Sunday, while guest hosting the public affairs program This Week, she allowed a student at the high school to insult the memory of her classmates and their families and claim the GOP and a majority of Second Amendment advocates had blood on their hands.

Raddatz takes her orders from Disney-ABC Television Group president Ben Sherwood, a reliable liberal who has completely destroyed his television business, turning it into the most far-left operation in the history of The Walt Disney Company – and broadcasting as a whole. He also ruined the network’s prime time entertainment lineup.

Speaking of entertainment, there’s nothing more hypocritical than Hollywood speaking about gun violence, when some of their own content has more violence than even the real world would have. If you want examples, check out Brent Bozell and Tim Graham’s column on Hollywood’s gun control hypocrisy.

To use a more recent example, Marvel Studios’ new movie Black Panther has over 163 shootings. All this while Marvel’s stars advocate for more gun control on social media. And you won’t believe the praise it’s been getting from liberal film critics so far. And who’s watching it? Children. That’s who.

The MRC’s Gabriel Hays has more:

The Media Research Center tallied 373 instances of violence within the 2-hour runtime. 163 of those were instances of gun violence. This included the standard rifle and pistol attacks, and the use of high-tech Wakandian weapons, as well.

Another 210 violent acts involved punches, kicks, choke holds, and attacks with swords. Characters were stabbed and/or sliced by spears and knives, and (Spoiler alert) much of the climax of the movie involved a no-holds-barred fistfight between the Black Panther and his rival, Killmonger.

The climax also included a sprawling battle scene where numerous people were shot, stabbed, blown up, and also stampeded by armor-wearing rhinos. Dead bodies were shown littering the battlefield in several instances, and while it’s implied there were heavy casualties throughout the movie, the audience was shown around 20 of them.

Unbelievable. And yet guns are the problem according to these pompous millionaires who need to, as radio talk show host Laura Ingraham would say, “shut up and sing?”

To be fair, Black Panther – which did very well at the box office – does have a moral lesson at the end of the film; but it’s an exception to the rule, which is one of many reasons why theatrical releases have suffered a huge decline in recent years. By the way, I plan on seeing and reviewing this film this coming weekend. I’ll let you know my thoughts when I get the chance.

To a great extent, there’s also the video game industry industry in America, which spews garbage like Grand Theft Auto to the masses. Read what Kentucky governor Matt Bevin had to say about this in a recent radio interview:

Guns are not the problem; we have a cultural problem in America. There are video games that, yes, are listed for mature audiences, but kids play them and everybody knows it, and there’s nothing to prevent the child from playing them. They celebrate the slaughtering of people. There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside of schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who’s lying there begging for their life.

Quite telling. To be fair, the first person shooter Call of Duty: WWII, an Activision release, is a pretty gripping reenactment of how terrifying the second world war was to the soldiers who fought in it. But Bevin’s point is there are some parents who actually permit their kids to play these games, even if they are rated Mature. That has to stop.

The truth of the matter is that the entertainment industry is doing nothing to make sure a tragedy like what happened in Florida this past Valentine’s Day doesn’t happen again. Maybe they should look at their own content instead of using the NRA as a scapegoat..